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Mario Kart 8 a best-seller, as Sony beats Microsoft despite price drop

Nintendo reveals healthy physical and digital sales numbers for its flagship Wii U title, while Microsoft's boast that Xbox One sales doubled is thrown into shadow.

Christian Nutt, Contributor

July 17, 2014

1 Min Read
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Nintendo sold 470,000 copies of Mario Kart 8 in the U.S. during the game's second month on sale, across both physical and digital channels, the company revealed. At U.S. retail, MK8 was both the second best-selling game (behind Ubisoft's Watch Dogs) according to the NPD Group, and overall best-selling single SKU -- meaning more copies of Mario Kart 8 were sold than any single version of Watch Dogs. Nintendo says that drove sales of Wii U hardware up 233 percent year-over-year, but declined to provide numbers. Software sales for the system were up 373 percent year-over-year. Microsoft also declined to provide numbers when it made a similar claim: the Xbox One sold more than twice as many units in June as it did in May. That's because the company dropped its Kinect camera from the box (and shaved $100 off the system's price) starting on June 9. It turns out that despite that, Sony's PlayStation 4 still outsold Microsoft's box in June, Sony said in a statement. Console hardware sales were overall up over 200 percent year-on-year, the NPD Group said, but it did not provide any platform data.

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